Mitochondria and Fate
When neurons are produced they're generated from progenitor (committed precursor) cell-division, but this division isn't equal (it's asymmetrical) – the contents of the dividing cell is distributed asymmetrically into the resulting two daughter cells. One becomes the differentiated neuron, the other stays in the pool of progenitors. By cell fate tracking in living embryonic chick tissue, this study shows that the unequal distribution of mitochondria (the cell's energy source generating organelles) underlies this asymmetric outcome – the cell with fewer mitochondria than its sister consistently differentiates into a neuron
Read the published research article here
Video from work by Benjamin Bunel and colleagues
Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure (IBENS), CNRS, Inserm, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France
Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in Nature Communications, December 2025
You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Bluesky
